MUCH TO KATE'S chagrin, Reagan decided that she wanted to drive home immediately after she'd tossed away the pregnancy test into the trash and slid back into her jacket.

"Do you really think that you ought to drive right now?" Kate asked nervously, scurrying at Reagan's heels as she strode through the room. Kate had seen the blatant dread on her sister's face when she'd stepped out of the bathroom. It was a look that Kate had never seen Reagan wear before, not even during the countless reoccurrences of bullshit that she'd put up with in her life.

"Yes. I have to go," Reagan answered mechanically, still void of any concrete feeling. She felt trapped in a state of limbo as she processed the truth. She was pregnant and there was no denying it, not after she'd seen the two defined pink lines staring up at her on the test. They had not even been faint, as if the test had been mocking her proudly by the certainty of those damning lines.

"What about Dave?" Kate continued as Reagan threw open the dormitory door. "Didn't you say that you were going to his place after this?"

"Not anymore," Reagan said with the slightest tremble to her voice. Under no circumstance did she find it possible to face Dave in that moment. She herself had not come to terms with the news and there was no way that she'd be able to sustain both his reaction and hers together. It seemed even impossible to imagine looking him in the eye.

Kate chased Reagan all the way downstairs to her car, but Reagan refused to change her mind. She had no desire to wait out her anxiety in Kate's dorm room. There was a perfectly good empty bedroom awaiting her arrival in Olympia and it was there where she would allow herself to crumble. Being in Kate's room would only feel like entrapment in the midst of her slowly budding panic attack.

"Call me soon," Kate urged. "We can figure this out together."

Together. The word reverberated in Reagan's mind as she pulled off of the university's campus. The only true person who she was really in it "together" with was the same person who she was then running away from. Kate's desire to help her was sincere, but there was only so much that she could do. She was a young college student with her whole life ahead of her. Once again, Reagan was the fuck up in comparison to her bright little sister.

The sky seemed to grow darker than ordinary as she drove back to Olympia, her hands growing slick with sweat while gripping the steering wheel. She didn't even realize that she'd been gritting her jaw together so hard that her teeth ached. The only thing she could focus on was the thought that in the strangest of ways, she was not alone in her car that night.

There was someone else there. Someone inside of her. While this idea would have been cause for celebration to some women, Reagan felt revolted by it. Knowing that her body was harboring something she had not asked for, nor was she capable of caring for, made her want to pull her car over and vomit.

Admittedly, she was familiar with babies. She could thank Richard and Kimberly for that. Although she had been young when Robbie was born, he'd still been the very first infant in her life whom she'd held and nursed as if he were her own. And when the twins had come along, she'd done the same thing with them, cradling them day and night and finding herself in the position of something akin to a mother.

But that was the only time Reagan had ever gone misty-eyed over babies. Besides her own siblings, she'd never felt a pull towards snotty-nosed little ones who screamed in the range of banshees and caused pile ups of dirty diapers. She'd always been content to love and wait on the babies born into her family, but other than that, it was safe to say that she mostly stayed away from all other infants.

It felt ironic that despite those feelings, she was in the situation that she suddenly found herself in. She of all people had wound up pregnant. The same girl who designated her weekends to going to punk shows and was in the middle of her very first relationship. There were plenty of women in the world who yearned for babies, who would have spared a piece of themselves to have one, yet of course Reagan had been selected as the next mother in line out of a billion others.

Fuck no, she thought. Don't even think of calling yourself a mother.

That was going too far. To associate that word with herself felt criminal. It was a title she didn't want nor did she feel she deserved. She may have been the best caretaker in the world to her siblings, but she felt with an aching hunch that she would make a terrible mother to her own kids. She was too apathetic, too hard. Her own mother had struggled to show her love over the years.

And then there was Dave. Bringing him to mind led to the growth of a lump in Reagan's throat. She swallowed it back, ordering herself not to cry, not just yet. But thinking about Dave in the context of the situation wrenched her heart into a tight ball.

She loved him. Of course she loved him and lately, she'd been thinking that she'd always love him. But they weren't parents or parent-material. They were two kids having fun, especially Dave, whose band was teetering on the edge of mainstream popularity and underground notoriety. Reagan knew that once, only once, in Virginia had she imagined them with babies of their own, but that had been lightyears into the future. It had been nowhere near close to the present.

She thought of their lives, intertwined by fate and weaved even tighter together by the strength of their feelings for one another. Their relationship was made up of the fun stuff Reagan had only seen her friends experience, or perhaps even characters in movies. They were free to love each other and do as they pleased when they were together. There were early mornings spent lying in bed, day trips to different cities and nights filled with the music from shows they both loved going to. Dave could flit off to another state or another country for several months and Reagan would wait for him. When he returned, they did it all over again.

Nowhere in that scheme of events did Reagan see room for a baby. The visual image of her and Dave cradling a newborn and fussing over how to parent well was foreign to her. It was sickening, as if did not belong in her head. They were young and in love, but that simple matter of addition didn't equate to preparedness for a child.

Her stomach knotted itself into a coil when she realized that she would have to tell Dave sooner than later. There was no time to wait, not when in a matter of weeks he'd be leaving with Nirvana again to tour and Nevermind would hit store shelves. She fisted her hand into a ball and pressed it firmly against her mouth, muffling the whimper of remorse she nearly let out.

Dave had so much to look forward to. Things were finally happening for him, all the good things he'd ever hoped for, but now the worst had come. And Reagan was going to have to be the one to break it to him.

She could feel moisture building in her eyes and she blinked it hurriedly away. The tears were clouding her vision, making it hard to see the road ahead. Even though she and Dave had succeeded in making this mistake together, she still felt a terrible guilt. It must have had to do with the fact that she was the one carrying the baby and she was the one who would have to deliver it.

If she chose to do so, that is.

By the time Reagan made her way through the streets of Olympia and arrived at her house, her lips and mouth had gone so dry that no amount of spit could rehydrate them. She'd developed a disturbing shake in her hands that wouldn't stop even as she tried to open her front door, struggling to slip the key into the lock.

"Reagan?" she heard Kimberly yell from the living room as she pushed the door open and bolted for the kitchen. She didn't answer to her mother's call. Hearing Kimberly's voice only made her angst worse knowing that Dave would not be the only person needing an explanation if she kept her baby.

She jerked open one of the cabinets and selected a cup, sticking it under the kitchen faucet and allowing it to fill with cool water. As she drained it in gulps, closing her eyes as she did so, Kimberly shuffled into the kitchen wearing a bathrobe. She folded her arms and watched Reagan finish her drink.

"Where have you been?" Kimberly inquired brazenly.

Reagan smacked her lips and took a deep breath of air, leaning over the counter before deciding that she needed another glassful of water. Flipping the faucet back on, she resisted making eye contact with her mother.

"I was at Kate's. I told you that's where I was going this morning."

"That was hours ago. You've been gone all day."

"We were out shopping for her room."

Reagan silenced herself as she raised her cup back to her lips for another drink. Kimberly eyed her suspiciously, noting the frazzled aura surrounding Reagan as she sloshed back water speedily.

"Thirsty?" Kimberly said sarcastically, cocking an eyebrow. Reagan set her cup down and steadied her breathing. The shaking in her hands had yet to stop.

"Yeah. I'm better now," she replied. She nonchalantly slipped past Kimberly and started for the stairs, feeling that it was best to avoid an argument altogether considering the state she was in.

"Reagan, you really should take a break from visiting Kate so much," Kimberly lectured, following Reagan. "She's supposed to adjust to college on her own. You're making that harder by being there all the time. I know your boyfriend is in Seattle, but maybe it would be best for you to give Kate some alone time."

"Alright," Reagan agreed blandly. "I'll cut back."

She began her climb towards her room, nervous about the shaking in her hands and the way she could hear her heartbeat in her ears. Kimberly's face contorted into a rare expression of concern as her eyes followed Reagan up the stairs.

"Are you okay?" Kimberly asked uncertainly.

Reagan hesitated for a moment on the staircase with one of her quivering hands on the railing. The irrational part of her that still hungered for a mother to take care of her insisted that she tell Kimberly what was happening. It would have been nice to not be an adult for once. Falling into the arms of someone who could actually handle what was happening to her would have been sweet relief.

But that was just not Kimberly's way.

"I'm fine," Reagan said. "Just tired."

She escaped Kimberly's quizzical staring and reached her room with relief. As she entered inside of it, she collapsed down onto her bed, allowing her legs to give out. Through a stammered inhale, she grabbed her pillow and hugged it to her chest. It may as well have been her life preserver in the stormy sea that she felt herself helplessly sinking to the bottom of.

Only several minutes passed before she heard Richard calling her name from downstairs.

"Reagan! Honey, you've got a phone call."

Reagan sat up slowly. She didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out who must have been waiting to speak to her on the landline. She had yet to forget who she'd unceremoniously blown off that night without explanation.

She walked downstairs tentatively and into the kitchen, spying Richard standing there with the phone in his hand. He held it out to her with a fatherly smile.

"For you," he said. She tried to hide the trembling of her hand as she accepted the phone and weakly returned her father's smile.

"Thanks," she said softly, raising the phone to her ear and waiting for the piercing pain she was sure she'd feel upon hearing his voice.

"Reagan? Are you okay?"

Dave did not wait for Reagan's greeting. He sounded nervous, proving that she'd caused him a great deal of worry by not showing up to his apartment at their agreed meeting time. Knowing that he had felt distress over her whereabouts made Reagan's sadness intensify.

"I'm okay. I'm not dead," she told him lamely, raking her fingers through her hair. Stress pulsated around her like an invisible shield.

"When you didn't come to the apartment, I freaked out," Dave said, still upset. "I was so scared. I thought you'd been in a fucking car crash or something."

"No, I wasn't. I'm fine. I drove straight home from Kate's."

There was a pause on Dave's end before he spoke again, his voice smaller than before.

"Why? I thought you were going to come here and spend the night with me."

Reagan bit down hard on her lip with her two front teeth, hoping that the pain of the action would force her to stay as calm and quiet as possible. More than anything, she wanted to be with Dave, cuddled in his arms and far away from the nauseating pain she was in. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and wake up from her nightmare to find herself beside him.

"I know," she said, her voice cracking. "I'm really sorry. I just had to go home. I didn't . . . I couldn't come."

"But why Reags? What's wrong? Are you sick?"

"No," Reagan said. She was beginning to cry, her throat thickening with sobs. She bowed her head into the palm of her free hand, wishing so badly that she'd never woken up that day.

"Then what is it? Do you want me to drive to Olympia?"

She heard the sound of rustling in the background, a sign that Dave was most likely getting up to retrieve his keys. Her heart was practically screaming in her ears, begging for him to come to her, though she knew better than that.

"No, please don't," she whispered, screwing her eyes closed. "Not tonight."

"What's happening babe? I don't understand," Dave pleaded. He seemed both upset and frustrated, torn by his need to nurture Reagan but also clearly irritated by the lack of information being given.

"Can you just come tomorrow please? Will you come to Olympia?"

"Yeah, of course I will. Kurt wants me and Krist to come by for some practice anyways. I'll stop by your place before then."

"Just come after," Reagan said. "I'll be here when you're done."

"Why? I want to see you right away," Dave insisted urgently.

"Please listen to me and just do it," Reagan said. She wondered if Richard and Kimberly could hear her from the living room over the sound of the television. "Come after your practice and we'll talk."

"Fuck Reagan, what do you fucking mean we'll talk? What are you trying to say?"

"It's not . . ."

"Are you breaking up with me?"

His panic was almost tangible through the phone. The pain of hearing it was almost as intense as a white-hot scalding burn.

"No, I'm not. I'm not breaking up with you, Dave. I've got to go to bed though. I'm tired. I'll just see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," Dave said, though he did not sound the least bit alright to let her go. He waited a moment before delivering the final blow, having no idea how badly it maimed Reagan to hear it.

"I love you Reagan."

Her hand started to shake even harder as she held the phone. The first few tears from her eyes escaped, running a clear path down her cheek and rolling off her chin.

"I love you too."

[author note] 
popping in to show off this cute edit of my girl. if anyone truly knows me, they are aware that i love to play around with editing apps (and i've spent a lot of money on them too 🤭)

maybe i'll do one of dave?